Hydrogen-permeable membranes are known. They fall generally into three classes: polymeric membranes, inorganic (non-metal porous or nonporous) membranes, and dense (nonporous) metal membranes. Polymeric membranes suffer from limited selectivity toward hydrogen over other gases, and limited resistance to high temperatures and reactive chemicals that may be present in typical feed gases.
Exemplary porous inorganic molecular hydrogen-permeable membranes such as aluminum oxide, silicon oxide, titanium oxide, magnesium oxide, chromium oxide, tin oxide, and various zeolites, have been investigated. See, for example, Hsieh, 33 Catal. Rev. Sci. Eng. 1 (1991). While such membranes exhibit very high hydrogen permeability, they also suffer from very low hydrogen selectivity due to their porous nature. Nonporous inorganic oxides are also known to be permeable to hydrogen in its ionic form. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,094,927 discloses materials that are permeable to hydrogen ions (referred to as solid-state proton conductors) based on silicon oxide, oxides of Groups IVB, VB, VIB and VIII of the Periodic Table, and fluorides of Groups IIA and IIIB of the Periodic Table. Additionally, diffusion coefficients for hydrogen ions through the oxides of molybdenum and tungsten have been reported by Sermon et al. in 72 JCS Faraday Trans. I. 730 (1976). Such solid-state proton conductors have been used by placing them between the cathode and anode in fuel cells, resulting in a net transport of hydrogen between the cathode and anode. However, these solid-state proton conductors are generally brittle and exhibit relatively low permeability to hydrogen, and have not generally been reported for use as a hydrogen separation membrane. The one exception is a nonporous silicon oxide membrane that is reported to allow hydrogen permeation through the silicon oxide by an activated surface-transport mechanism along grain boundaries. See Gavalas et al., 44 Chem. Eng. Sci. 1829 (1989). Although this dense silicon oxide membrane exhibits very high selectivities for hydrogen over nitrogen, it is also brittle and susceptible to reaction with steam at elevated temperatures, further limiting its utility.
Dense (nonporous) metal membranes that are selectively permeable to hydrogen are also known. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,388,479 and 3,393,098, both of which disclose Group VIIB and VIII alloy membranes such as palladium alloy catalytic membranes. Such metal membranes are superior to polymeric membranes and to inorganic (non-metal) membranes in that they have essentially complete selectivity for hydrogen over other gases, can be operated at high temperature (up to about 1000.degree. C.), and are chemically resistant to gases in the feed stream. However, the prohibitively high cost of palladium has led to efforts to fabricate composite hydrogen-permeable metal membranes by coating certain less expensive transition metal alloy base metals with palladium or palladium alloys. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,468,235 and 3,350,846. The palladium or palladium-alloy coating on such base metals employs only a relatively small amount of palladium, imparting chemical resistance to the base metal and in some cases increasing the rate of adsorption of hydrogen onto the metal membrane surface. However, such coated metal membranes have an inherent shortcoming in that, under the elevated temperature conditions of use, the coating metal tends to diffuse into the base metal, thereby destroying both the hydrogen permeability and the chemical resistance available from such composite metal membranes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,373 discloses a nonporous hydrogen-permeable composite metal membrane that addresses this intermetallic diffusion problem for a base metal alloy of a specific composition coated with a palladium alloy of specific composition. However, the composition of the palladium alloy coating and the base metal alloy are narrowly defined so as to favor partitioning of the palladium into the coating alloy as opposed to the base metal alloy. Consequently, this approach is not general in nature, requires strict control over alloy composition, and allows for little variation in selection of metals for membrane fabrication.
The use of an intermediate reactive layer to facilitate diffusion bonding of a hydrogen-permeable metal membrane to a substrate metal is known. For example, Russian Patent No. 1,058,587 discloses a method for manufacturing membrane elements for diffusion-based hydrogen separators by diffusion-welding palladium or palladium-alloy membranes to an undefined metal substrate. Specifically, the '587 patent discloses first saturating a hydrogen-permeable coating metal at elevated temperature, then cooling the so-hydrogen-loaded coating metal, then applying a "reactive gasket" of ultrafinely divided powders of metallic oxides over the area between a base metal and the coating metal where the base and coating metals are to be welded together, then subjecting the composite to high pressure (2000-2500 psi) and high temperature (650.degree.-700.degree. C.) to achieve a "diffusion weld" between the coating metal and the base support metal. The diffusion weld results from the complete reduction of the metal oxides "reactive gasket" intermediate layer to pure metal(s) by hydrogen desorbed from the hydrogen-loaded coating metal. It is unclear whether (1) the palladium or palladium-alloy membrane is attached only to the edges of the metal substrate via the diffusion-bonded weld, or (2) the palladium or palladium-alloy membrane completely covers the surface of the metal substrate and the diffusion-bonded weld. In the first case, the welded portion of the membrane need not be hydrogen-permeable as hydrogen is required only to permeate the unwelded portion of the palladium or palladium-alloy membrane and the hydrogen-permeable portion of the membrane is not a composite metal membrane at all, but rather is simply a palladium or palladium-alloy membrane. The drawback of such an approach is that the palladium or palladium-alloy membrane must be sufficiently thick to be self-supporting and the membrane is therefore unacceptably expensive. In the second case, the resulting composite membrane would include an intermediate layer which, after fabrication, is a metal or metal alloy, with attendant reduction in the overall hydrogen permeability of the membrane.
These and other shortcomings of prior art hydrogen-permeable composite metal membranes are overcome by the present invention, which is summarized and described in detail below.